Robert Louis Stevenson was a great traveler, who spent his last years in the Pacific, far from his native Scotland. His novel Treasure Island is a seafaring adventure story filled with treasure, treachery, pirates, ships and islands. It was originally published as a serial in the children's magazine Young Folks. Stevenson's novel greatly influenced popular pirate imagery: the treasure map marked with "X", the tropical island, the schooner

Our Mutual Friend was Charles Dickens' last completed novel, and some believe his most sophisticated. A young man discovers that he must marry a mercenary young woman before he can claim his inheritance. He is on his way to do his father's bidding when a body discovered in the Thames is identified as his, and his inheritance passes instead to Boffins, a working class man. The effects are felt through all levels of society.